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The Performer, the Instrument Maker, and the instrument |
The Evolution of the North American Steel String Guitar; Meeting the Needs of and Helping to Fuel the Creative Process of African American Musicians.| |
Bob Shields|
12/31/2012|

Often the creative product of an individual within a musical framework reflects not only his or her own creative behavior but the creative expression afforded by the instrument and the facilitation of that creativity contributed by the instrument maker. This is certainly the case when one looks at the early African American rural blues and songster musicians and the luthiers that developed the North American steel string guitar that functioned as the primary vehicle of instrumental artistic expression in those art forms. This paper will explore the connection between the performer, instrument maker, and the instrument, and the creative product that resulted in an expression of the African American experience. I will also highlight parts of the creative process in the evolution of the steel string guitar in America that may benefit educators and students in terms of leading them to look beyond the familiar when inspired, in order to facilitate their creative needs. If you were to listen to the music of early 20th century African American rural blues players and songsters played on steel string guitars and juxtapose it with guitar music of European tradition played by the white middle class players of the Spanish classical guitar, many differences would be immediately audible. The steel string guitar was louder, brighter sounding, and provided the player with increased ability to sustain notes, bend pitches, and add more percussive qualities. The Steel string guitar was also played with a new technique that evolved to help express the new music being played on it. Understanding the evolution of the Steel String guitar and the music it facilitated means understanding at least some brief facts about early guitar history in North America. The popular Spanish (classical) gut string guitar had been first been brought to North America in the sixteen hundreds and was an instrument that was used by the white middle class. Its popularity rose the 1830s when “white middle class Americans still influenced by what cultural trends were happening in London eagerly adopted an English fad for the guitar” (Bradford 2009). “The most popular professional guitarists in America during the 1830s and 1840s, such as G.E. Bini, John Coupa and Dolores Nevares de Goni, were European musicians performing in the prevailing European style” (Bradford 2009). An article from Washington, D.C. Daily National Journal in 1831 noted the “extraordinary fascination and currency this favourite instrument has acquired in fashionable circles” (Bradford 2009). By the 1840’s middle class blacks were also adopting the guitar. “A monograph on the black middle class from 1841 notes ‘It is rarely that the Visitor in the different families where there are 2 or 3 ladies will not find one or more of them competent to perform on the pianoforte, guitar or some other appropriate musical instrument’”(Bradford 2009). There is some evidence, however, “that the guitar was also being played by at least some working class African Americans in the south as early as the 1830’s, although it did not surge in popularity until the 1880’s” (Paul Oliver, The Story of the Blues, London, 1969, 13). Over time, sophisticated urban musicians began displacing the European repertoire and began playing American ‘roots’ music (Bradford 2009). By the 1850s, guitarists were featured with many leading blackface minstrel troupes (Bradford 2009). Middle class African-Americans, like their white counterparts, had been swept up in the European craze for the guitar that seized America in the 1830s. Following the lead of the middle class, the...

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The Paradigm Shift:
Europeans, Americans, and NorthAmerican Indians
History 2071
Professor Low
October 15, 2013¬¬¬¬
The NorthAmerican continent has seen endless bloodshed and war between its own people as well as those from far and distant lands. There were the French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and the Civil War, to name a few, and that is all before the twentieth century. When most people think of war they think of these wars that have, admittedly been integral in forming modern society and the culture today. However no one ever even contemplates the war between the early settlers and the first nations that staked a claim in the lands of America. But this battle took a major role in the formation of the United States of America. With these encounters a majority of the Midwest was won, an area that is massive in population. Whether this war was named or not it holds an important role in the creation of this country. However an important part of the war for America often gets over looked.
When studying treaties it is common to look at what is won or lost or briefly how long it took or who was there to sign it. It is not very common to see a study of the method of how the two parties come to make agreements upon the proper way to go about making a treaty. Throughout the formation of the country and the settlement of the Americas there were many...

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The AmericanEvolution
Change is everywhere. Like a chameleon changing its skin color as it hides from a predator in the desert sand, we are naturally equipped to adapt to our surroundings as living beings in time of threat. This theory is no different in the realm of social history: humans are apt to change their actions, beliefs, and motives in transitional periods of sociological enlightenment or political progression; and with regard to theAmerican Revolution, this process of social evolution is apparent in essentially every piece of pertinent historical literature. In Gordon Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution, he states that the American Revolution was a rather “conservative affair, concerned almost exclusively with politics and constitutional rights…hardly a revolution at all.” As this statement arguably serves as the thesis of Wood’s monograph, Wood couldn’t be any more antithetical in his measure of the American Revolution’s radicalism. Wood claims that so long as radicalism is measured by “the amount of social change that actually took place [then] the Revolution was the most radical and far-reaching event in American history.” Wood seemingly contradicts his thesis just pages after his statement, a theme that carries throughout his monograph, which is what makes his work so partial. This essay will challenge Wood in a...

...﻿The American Revolution was an accelerated evolution rather than a cataclysmic revolution to a certain point. An accelerated evolution is a rapid process of growth and change, while a cataclysmic revolution is a sudden and violent event that brings great changes. The extent to which the American Revolution was an accelerated evolution was during events that completely disregarded the government. When considered politically, economically and socially the extent to which the American Revolution was an accelerated evolution, instead of a cataclysmic revolution is shown. Politically, the American Revolution was more of an accelerated evolution, despite some drastic choices that indicate a cataclysmic revolution. The political causes for the American Revolution began with many new acts being passed by the British parliament to put taxes on certain items in the colonies. The French and Indian War had cost Britain a lot of money and King George ll wanted help in paying the expenses. New taxes passed by the government gradually began to anger the colonists more and more, once they realize the unfairness of another country thousands of miles away telling them what to do. Acts like the Stamp Act gave Britain power over the colonies and the colonists eventually began to resist them. For example, the Stamp Act of 1765 was passed to cover the...

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On Learning to Play Guitar
If you decide you want to play guitar, there are a surprising number of strange obstacles in your way. I hear from a lot of people who say "I am going to get guitar lessons for my kid" without realizing what a thorny and complex thing it is. Piano or fiddle lessons are kind of routine. Untold numbers of people are blaming themselves for not getting going or losing interest in their guitar lessons, when what they were being taught was not at all appropriate for what they wanted or needed. It's hard to believe that there are absolutely no rules, regulations or anything. Anybody can call themselves a guitar teacher, and they can teach anything they want. They might read music and try to teach you to read music, and they might not. They might sing and they might not. It's all over the map. And yet guitar is the most common instrument, and chances are there is someone within a mile of you who could teach everything you need to learn, if you could only locate them.
I am writing this in hopes that someone will read it and be able to better circumvent these obstacles, and perhaps better find their own place in the world of music more quickly and pleasantly. I have never seen anything in print that tried to describe how confusing the "I want to learn guitar" problem really is. Anybody can learn to bang out a few...

..."variegated", via the Hindi 'चीता' .
Genetics, evolution, and classification
The genus name, Acinonyx, means "no-move-claw" in Greek, while the species name, jubatus, means "maned" or "crested" in Latin, a reference to the dorsal crest found in cheetah cubs.
The cheetah has unusually low genetic variability. This is accompanied by a very low sperm count, motility, and deformed flagella. Skin grafts between unrelated cheetahs illustrate the former point, in that there is no rejection of the donor skin. It is thought that the species went through a prolonged period of inbreeding following a genetic bottleneck during the last ice age. This suggests that genetic monomorphism did not prevent the cheetah from flourishing across two continents for thousands of years.
The cheetah likely evolved in Africa during the Miocene epoch, before migrating to Asia. Recent research has placed the last common ancestor of all existing populations as living in Asia 11 million years ago, which may lead to revision and refinement of existing ideas about cheetah evolution.
The now-extinct species include: Acinonyx pardinensis, much larger than the modern cheetah and found in Europe, India, and China; Acinonyx intermedius, found over the same range. The extinct genus Miracinonyx was extremely cheetah-like, but recent DNA analysis has shown that Miracinonyx inexpectatus, Miracinonyx studeri, and Miracinonyx trumani, found in North America and called...

...The colonisation of North America by the Europeans became one of the most crucial points for the native NorthAmericans. The differing experiences of contact between both cultures had overwhelmingly disastrous impacts on the normal way of life. From such contact arose the issue of land disputes, in turn resulting in massacres and frontier wars which could have otherwise been unnecessary. The factors stated above provide a suitable stimulus for a discussion in regards to the varying encounters of the Indigenous NorthAmericans.
A calamitous result of contact between the Indigenous NorthAmericans and the European colonists was the massacre of many innocents and the frontier wars which caused heavy damage and losses on both sides. The problem mainly arose from English settlement on the coast, which gradually increased in size and moved inwards on to lands owned by Native NorthAmericans. Quarrels over land between the two peoples developed, and disagreements would lead to the death of a settler or Indian, and in turn these conflicts would mainly result in war.
The differing ways of life was a main cause for fighting between the white people and the Red Indians. While some Indians grew crops, all natives hunted big game, and lives of tribes would resolve around wild animals. In the East, white settlers had cleared a lot of land for agricultural...

...2000 years before Europeans began to arrive in the New World, the last era of the pre-Columbian development began. NorthAmerican cultures such as the Mississippian culture, the Hopewell Tradition, and the Hohokam culture experienced growth and environmental adaptation throughout this era. Major contributions and innovations of Native Americans have developed and been passed on through generations of ancestors.
Originating in 700 A.D., the Mississippian culture expanded through the Mississippi Valley and out into the southeastern states of Alabama, Georgia and Florida. For 800 years, until the 1550s, the Mississippian culture prospered. They cultivated a substantial amount of corn, by means of intensive farming, and other crops, such as squash and beans. Their trade networks with other native Americans extended across the New World in all directions, as far west as the Rocky Mountains, north as the Great Lakes, south as the Gulf of Mexico and east as the Atlantic Ocean. They manufactured an abundance of stone, shell and copper products. Some scholars believe that the Mississippian culture evolved as a result of climate conditions and their own strength and ability to grow, though others argue that Mexico influenced their agricultural techniques and religious practices.
Native Americans of the Mississippian culture were nicknamed Temple Mound Builders because they built earthen...